Is Russia Next in the Google Saga?

Foreignpolicy.com had an interesting article last week about Google in Russia. According to the article, Google is rapidly gaining in popularity in Russia. Yandex, a Russian search engine currently holds 62.8 percent of the market. Google has advanced to take over 21.9% of the market.

It seems that Russia, like Iran and other countries are considering creating their own search engine:

RBK Daily, a respected Russian news agency, reports (in Russian) that the Russian government might soon be launching a “national search engine”. According to RBK’s anonymous sources inside Kremlin, it would aim at satisfying “state-oriented” needs such as “facilitating access to safe information” and “filtering web-sites that feature banned content.” It’s going to be an ambitious project: the government is prepared to invest $100 million in this new venture, does not want to allow any foreign funding, and intends to build it in cooperation with the private sector.